Virtuous Sinners
by starrrz
Summary: Thomas never got his reference. When they meet again, Jimmy is ashamed of the depths he has forced the man to.


_Crosspost from AO3. :3 Written for a prompt on the Downton Abbey Kink Meme: "Slight 3x08 AU and after. Angst/Dark/Romance. This is very detailed, sorry, b/c I really want to see it filled. Carson gives in to Jimmy and Thomas has to leave with no reference, before O'Brien can make Jimmy change his mind. Thomas vanishes without ever writing a letter, saying where he is or what he's doing. Like Ethel, Thomas ends up selling his body - in London, where he is sure nobody he knows will find him.  
Two years later: Jimmy, who is indeed gay, is with one of the Crawleys in London, and uses his free time to go to a brothel*, where he walks straight (Lol!) into Thomas. They are shocked to see each other in such a place and Jimmy leaves, ashamed, but returns the next day. He feels even more responsible when he notices how broken Thomas is. Thomas begs him not to tell anyone. Jimmy returns again whenever he has free time; not for sex, but to see if Thomas is alright, and they become friends, while Jimmy tries to figure out how to get Thomas out of this life. Secretly Jimmy also falls in love with Thomas, but is afraid to tell, b/c he thinks Thomas will push him away.  
Bonus: Thomas, oblivious that Jimmy is in love with him, offers Jimmy to have sex one day b/c that's what Jimmy came for the first time. Bonus-Bonus if Thomas is really sweet and careful."_

* * *

Thomas Barrow was gone, and he was glad of it.

Those were Jimmy's thoughts when it was discovered Barrow had disappeared. His room had been stripped bare of all personal possessions, and his uniform had been left atop his immaculately made bed, neatly folded.

His Lordship was livid, for the cricket match was almost upon them, and Carson came to him, of all people, and warned him that if he knew anything and was not telling, Barrow would not be the only servant joining the ranks of Downton's former footmen.

Alfred said that it was good riddance to bad rubbish, because it was a sin, and there could never be any excuse for it. The kitchen maids shunned him, too mindful of his recent brash behaviour, and though O'Brien paled when the announcement was made, afterwards she refused to be drawn on the subject.

None of it gave him the satisfaction he had thought it would. He still thought of Barrow, of the way he had sat too close, and let his touch linger too long. He thought of that day in the hall, when Barrow taught him to wind a clock, and he thought of the rumours that were floating around out of earshot of the senior servants.

Barrow had been seen crying the night he had left. Sobbing like a beaten, broken man.

It was Downton, Jimmy decided, when he awoke from yet another night of half remembered touches, flushed and panting. So long as he remained he would never be free of Barrow, and the sickness he had tainted him with.

He found a good position in London, because the young ladies of the house wanted something nice to look at, and darling Louisa had just taken on a boy who was the very image of Rudolph Valentino.

Jimmy met the lad for himself, in due course. That night he struggled to fix his mind on Gloria Swanson, or Rosie from the kitchen, or even the young ladies themselves, all three of them flighty bright young things, who rolled their stocking tops and painted their faces, and would have completely scandalised everyone back in Downton.

Instead he thought of close cropped dark hair, and long, masculine fingers, and strained up so violently into his hand that he was forced to stop pretending. It hadn't been Barrow, nor Downton.

It had always been lurking within himself.

Once he admitted it to himself things seemed suddenly clearer. There was no self-recrimination, nor the fear of burning of all eternity. For he was no great believer, and he saw the way some of the young ladies' gentlemen friends carried on besides, now that he knew to look for it.

If it was good enough for heirs and lordlings, it was good enough for Jimmy Kent also.

He learned the signs to watch for, and the places men might go to relieve their frustration. London was not like Downton; the rats lived alongside the kings, out of sight out of mind, and though the danger of discovery was always upon him, in some ways Jimmy rather liked the excitement.

That was the principle reason for his attending a new address, passed on by a like minded acquaintance. It was a downtrodden looking place, seeming to lack even the pretence of respectability, and fear rippled down his spine at the prospect of what could happen, should the wrong ears hear of him visiting.

The place smelled dank and the wallpaper was peeling. The stairs creaked under his step, and when he pushed open the door he had been directed to it took a moment to make anything out, the light was so dim.

He blinked once, twice, heart pounding for anything might be waiting in the darkness, and then he sucked in a sharp breath that startled himself as well as the man in front of him.

"Barrow?" Jimmy managed, scarcely more than a whisper, and he realised in that moment that it was and it wasn't. Barrow's frame was too thin, and his skin too pale. The proud tilt about his jaw was long gone, and when the panic showed clear in his face Jimmy didn't know what was more awful - the desperate fear, or the dead emptiness that had gone before it.

"Please don't tell anyone," Barrow said, _pleaded_, and bile rose in the back of Jimmy's throat because there was no anger in his words, or even any recrimination.

He never knew what he said in the moments which followed. Had no clear recollection of rushing from the room, and down the stairs, and out into the cold night air. He simply found himself a few streets away, forehead resting against cold brick, heaving in great lungfuls of air as though he had been running a marathon.

The encounter wouldn't leave him the day after, nor the next, and he was so distracted he knocked claret all over the tablecloth and lost his half day along with most of his week's wages. At night, curled around his pillow, he was haunted by the look in Barrow's eyes.

He had done that. Reduced a man to the wretch he had chanced upon, and it might have been done to himself, had circumstances been different.

It was that last thought that had him returning at the very next opportunity. This time he went into the club proper, and to his surprise it looked little different to any other he had visited, a stark contrast to the squalid upstairs rooms. He looked about himself, attempting not to be too obvious, and swallowed thickly when his gaze fell upon a familiar figure.

Barrow was working the crowd tonight, all knowing smile and flirtatious glances. But Jimmy had already seen beneath it, and he could tell how brittle the facade was, and how much effort its maintenance was taking. He hadn't realised he had ever paid Barrow such close attention, to know these things beyond question.

"I didn't expect to see you back here," Barrow said when he finally made his way over, trying for cool bravado though Jimmy could see the way his fingers shook, when he paused to light a cigarette.

"I never did know when to quit," Jimmy said in response, feeling the smile tug at his lips though the situation wasn't amusing. Far from it.

The silence stretched between them.

"I'd best get on," Barrow said at last and Jimmy couldn't help himself, was half out of his seat before Barrow was more than a step away.

"Barrow - Thomas," the other man turned to look at him, expression guarded, and Jimmy finished, "Can I at least buy you a drink or something?"

And that was the start of it.

He couldn't say why he kept returning. Guilt, perhaps. Some misguided quest for forgiveness. Barrow's face lit up at the sight of him, and his own gut squirmed, making him wish that he had the power to turn back time.

He wouldn't have pushed so hard, he thought; he would have been content for Barrow to leave with a reference. He would have had the sense to let Barrow down gently, before things went too far. He would have leaned back into Thomas' hands, that night he had been sat at the piano, and he would have been awake when Thomas came to his room. Waiting.

The latter option was playing through his mind when Thomas' voice cut through his imaginings.

"What are you thinking about? Some doe eyed hall boy taken your fancy?"

Jimmy pulled a face at the suggestion and said, "Hall boys are out of fashion. Everyone's simply wild for old King Tut this season."

He said it with exaggerated flair and Thomas laughed, the sound making something ache inside of him. It was his afternoon off and they were sat on a bench in the park, like two young fools in love and - and the truth was shocking in its obviousness.

"I'd best be off," Thomas said, and ground his cigarette beneath his foot as he stood. He was still thin and pale, but the cold air had put some colour in his cheeks, and his profile was truly striking.

"Do you blame me?" Jimmy blurted suddenly, the question coming from nowhere, though he had thought it often enough. Something flashed across Thomas' face, something painful, and then he met Jimmy's gaze, voice raw,

"I never blamed you."

Jimmy tried to stay away. Because it was one thing to find relief with a nameless stranger, or scratch an itch with a sympathetic acquaintance, but it was quite another to fall for a man. That way lay ruin; he had seen it with his own eyes, and read about it in the papers.

Still the maids giggled that he was obviously "daft on someone," and when Lady Josephine came home in the early hours from some party or other, red eyed and swaying, she told him,

"You had better not be treating your sweetheart as abominably as Gerald has treated me. I shall never ever forgive him!"

Josephine did, of course, and he found himself back in the darkness of the club, fingers fidgeting around his glass to stop himself from reaching out and touching Thomas' hand. He knew, now, how it must have been for Thomas at Downton, though it seemed so very long ago, yet he remembered it all as if it were yesterday.

Perhaps he stared too long, or too hard. Perhaps one of the other patrons or workers had said something. All Jimmy knew was that Thomas was the one to touch his hand, fingers stroking down to the inside of his wrist, so that his cheeks flamed and his blood burned.

"It's alright to ask, I won't say no."

Jimmy blinked, pulse pounding, and then Thomas was continuing,

"You've more than paid for it. How many drinks have you bought me now?"

The realisation hit him like cold water, and he was snatching his wrist back before he could think better of it.

"I don't want to force you," he said, but he was weak, so very weak, and when Thomas looked up at him through dark lashes and said quietly,

"Then think of it as a thank you for this. For not forgetting me. There's nothing else I can offer you."

He found himself standing and following.

They went to the same cramped little room as before, and Jimmy felt awkward and sickened, even as his heart raced and his flesh responded eagerly.

Thomas worked open the buttons of his shirt, and kissed him with such tenderness that it was too easy to forget that this was meant to be a transaction. Too easy to forget that what they were doing was considered sordid and filthy, and that when it was done it was going to mean less than nothing to Thomas.

"You're so beautiful," Thomas whispered then, cradling his face, and Jimmy knew that he wasn't, at least not on the inside, because he couldn't help but wonder how many other men Thomas had used that line on.

But it was his name Thomas gasped, his movements sweet and careful, and Jimmy writhed and trembled, and completely fell apart beneath him.

Jimmy kissed Thomas again when it was over, soft and open mouthed, and reached for his hand, the one that proved Thomas had fought for King and country.

"I would give anything to go back, if I could," he said. "I never thought it would mean this."

He meant the room and the club, the men who pawed at Thomas downstairs, and those who did what they would to him here, leaving bruises and welts along with their money.

But Thomas pulled away and began to dress himself, jaw tight and eyes too bright.

"They say that in Paris," Jimmy said, desperate, "men such as us live openly. Almost."

Thomas gave a choked sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and said simply,

"I don't speak French."

Jimmy was the one spied sobbing by a maid that night, so that the cook patted him on the arm the following morning, and told him that they were bound to make it up, him and whoever this girl was he was sweet on.

He went back still, over and over again, because he was in too deep and perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps it was a sickness.

Thomas told him he ought to move on. Ought to forget so that he might find happiness. But Jimmy couldn't. He didn't want to. He was clever, and charming, and resourceful - Thomas himself had said so.

Somehow he would find a way to make it work.

He had to.


End file.
